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Thought provoking & relevant considering it's a dated article.
Quote:
...Having laid claim to the public domain, the malefactors of debt increased the magnitude of their operations. American industry and banking moved toward greater consolidation through trusts, holding companies and monopolies that later were to culminate in today's multinationals. (As a typification, in 1913 the Morgan- Rockefeller empire held, in all, 341 directorships in 122 corporations.)
This new concentration of power was now directed by various corporations to the control over America's finite natural resources, its technologies and operative facilities. Among the energy and mineral resources were oil, coal, natural gas, iron ore, copper, aluminum, etc. Operating facilities, as an example, were transportation, oil refineries and electric power. The avaricious exploitation of these natural resources made America a "have-not nation" at the conclusion of World War II.
Now, there emerge into clear view America's military and economic cliques that have combined into what can only be described as the consolidation of all the prior exploitive rackets into a global monopoly. It dwarfs all past fascist attempts at conquest. An uncontrolled corrupt authority has arisen on our Continent, an authority who has assumed the rights of sovereignty, usurping governance that we are trained to believe is residing in the people.
Those who have exploited for profit and power have misused the environment and its resources upon which our survival and standard of living depend. They promote a system based upon exponential growth on a finite Earth, and this cannot continue without our destruction.
Good stuff. Though written 20 years ago, it could've been written 20 days ago and still be prescient.
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Nobody seems to want to believe this. It's like a monster in the room no one wants to look at, rather blame hatfield, rather blame mccoy, rather blame anyone or anything else.
Nobody seems to want to believe this. It's like a monster in the room no one wants to look at, rather blame hatfield, rather blame mccoy, rather blame anyone or anything else.
I have been saying for a long time that natural resources need fair share and appropriation constraints.
I think this link does point to a good deal of things that aren't quite right, and other things that are vastly wrong in our system. It also uses some fuzzy logic itself. For instance, that chart tracks with our massive trade deficit and world population growth. Look here: Per capita GDP Ranking
and File:World-Population-1800-2100.png - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
I think that's pertinent because we are the world currency. We're obliged to service the planets population. Central bankers aren't primary actors within discrete borders. Every nation on the planet is & has been leaning on the USD in one form or another. Consider the consequences of USD utterly failing on the entire industrialized world. What does that mean to emerging China & India as well? We are the middle easts best customer, and the charitable donor for tsunami's and earthquakes in 3rd world.
Another postulation made...
Quote:
What if there were NO taxes? Then there would be no friction and the money would continue to circulate around the room.
This is an exceptionally naive assumption. Money velocity would slow to a creep from human habits of hoarding. This would be the problem when money comes to represent power over others. That's another huge problem with our brand of civilization, the consequences being when that pile of $$$ is permitted to override good governance, our very government is bought out from under us.
Another postulation I disagree...
Quote:
I agree with the detractors insofar as this is not a perfect metric of our predicament. GDP, for example, is kind of a fuzzy number. Not just because of tabulation games the government plays along with the constant revisions, but because GDP doesn’t even have a universal definition. Different countries calculate GDP in different ways.
GDP relative to OURSELVES (not other nations) is not fuzzy. Americans are working harder, producing more, making less, bennies reduced, less security, and multiple actors are playing upon the general material wealth of our nation. This chart, and the overall article, want to believe in easy answers like oversimplified taxes, or abolishment of the Fed. Of course debt is a huge actor on this overall picture, however, if I made a million last year, taxed minimally, lived within my means 100%, AND serviced the nations debt I'd still be above water.
When you add the fact that American wealth has been hemorrhaging steadily with massive exponential trade imbalances for nearly 40yrs that blows his closed box theory right out of the water. Whatever complaints anyone would have about wealth distribution schemes, that tilt has been the silent killer. Globalization means we no longer have a closed system with predictable actors, or even a means by which a jurisdiction can be managed. Globalization is the wild wild west of chaos where might makes right. We have codified a system where politicians are legally bought and sold, and codified the reserve system in 1913 allowing this abstraction to take on a life of it's own.
I cannot help but intuitively feel for these past years even prior to 911 that economic warfare was being perpetrated upon we the people. The gap between haves and have nots kept widening, and the middle class was the monkey in the middle. The system established to provide a stable basis for business to thrive was sucked out to sea servicing the world tide.
Of course this is all rather fascinating considering the accusation that Obama is a socialist when in fact he is a devotee of monopoly capitalism as any American president in the 20th century.
Of course this is all rather fascinating considering the accusation that Obama is a socialist when in fact he is a devotee of monopoly capitalism as any American president in the 20th century.
Of course this is all rather fascinating considering the accusation that Obama is a socialist when in fact he is a devotee of monopoly capitalism as any American president in the 20th century.
Agreed partially. He's playing the house deck as are all politicians. That's what makes tea so irrational. Until the rules change, no matter how much musical chairs you play, it ends the exact same way.
I'm glad you posted that link. I wonder how many conservatives are too fearful of being seduced into communism to earnestly consider the critique of capitalism.
This passage I found particularly eerie, because I think we're 3/4's of the way there already.
Quote:
Kautsky argued that the war did not in fact flow from the character of world capitalism. On the contrary, the growing economic interdependence of the world, he postulated, would compel capitalists into a policy of “super-imperialism” in which mutual national rivalries would be replaced by the joint exploitation of the world by “internationally united finance capital.”
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